A simple question and the usual quick answer is “to be found in Google”!
But what business objective does that SEO work serve? Optimisation takes time, effort and money if it is to achieve lasting results, so it needs to fit inside the overall business plan.
There was a good article – The 6 Goals of SEO: Choosing the Right Ones for Your Business – on the SEOMoz blog earlier today which looked at how search optimisation (SEO) can be used to meet very different business needs.
The six different types of goals identified were :
1. SEO for Raw Traffic – great if people pay you to advertise on your site.
2. SEO for E-commerce – generating online sales of products and services
3. SEO for Branding – raising awareness, gaining mindshare
4. SEO for Lead Generation – the most common B2B objective
5. SEO for Reputation Management – bringing good news to the surface, and burying the bad.
6. SEO for Ideological Influence – swaying public opinion, from politics to religion to local issues.
Many businesses will have more than one goal, so what is the priority? And how do you monitor the achievement of that goal?
